


Winter Weather

by quantumducky



Series: Holiday Prompts [5]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Human AU, M/M, Power Outage, Snowed In, it was supposed to be fluffy but some angst happened i wasn't expecting, it's more sort of, pre-romantic, they decided to yell at each other, you could read it as platonic if you wanted probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 07:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17402216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumducky/pseuds/quantumducky
Summary: Of course it would be each other Roman and Virgil get stuck with when a snowstorm traps them in the cabin their friend group is supposed to be sharing and knocks the power out.Written for prompt #11 on the "Holiday Month" prompt list by @sanderssidescelebrations on tumblr.





	Winter Weather

Virgil was fiddling with the radio, trying to find a station that would actually come in and wasn’t country, when the first good song he’d managed to catch in over an hour was cut off by the grating, one might even say panic-inducing tones of an emergency alert.  He startled and hit his head on the window, swearing loudly.

_“A winter weather message from the National Weather Service…”_

He exchanged a wide-eyed look with Roman, who really should not have been looking at anything other than where he was driving, as the voice informed them of an incoming snowstorm and the need to get off the road and indoors before it hit.

“It’s fine, we’re almost there,” Roman said more confidently than he felt.  “We can make it.”

Virgil weighed his chances of winning that argument, and decided it wasn’t worth the risk of distracting the driver.  “Whatever,” he sighed.  “I just want it to be known that if we go off the road into a ditch and die of hypothermia trapped in this car, it was your fault.”

They did make it, if barely.  Roman pulled up to the cabin their group of four would be sharing for the next couple weeks right as the snowfall started getting heavy.  “You’re carrying my stuff inside,” Virgil announced, “as compensation for all the stress you just put me through.”  Roman was doubly annoyed by this because now he couldn’t _volunteer_ to do so and come out of it looking like a gentleman.  While he struggled with their combined belongings, Virgil unlocked the front door and went in to look around.

It was a very nice place, even if the interior decoration wasn’t exactly what he would have chosen.  The living room definitely had a big enough couch for all of them, and then some, and there was a TV mounted over the fireplace that would be perfect for the Christmas movie marathon Roman and Patton had been so excited about.  The pantry was already stocked with canned foods and pasta and such.  Virgil wasn’t too happy about the gas stove, especially in combination with Patton, but maybe he could be convinced to let someone less forgetful and accident-prone do the cooking.

There was a bit of a problem when it came to the bedrooms: there were only two, and only one of those had two twin-size beds instead of a single large one.  The couch folded out into a bed as well, so it wasn’t _really_ an issue, but Virgil could already see himself and Patton fighting over the pullout because neither of them wanted the other to have to deal with it.  That was going to be a headache for sure.

After he’d seen the entire house, he wandered back into the living room and sat down to check his phone.  There was no cell service out here, because _of course,_ but he’d apparently missed a call from Logan while they had been in the car.  He tapped the notification to listen to the voicemail he’d left.  Roman, coming through the door with the last of their stuff, watched his expression go from neutral to concerned to “kill me now” in the course of about ten seconds.

“Uh… you alright there?”  He dumped the things he was holding on the ground with everything else and kicked the door shut.

Virgil set his phone down and groaned, looking up at the ceiling.  “Yeah totally, except that we- by which I mean you- were the only ones stupid enough to keep driving once the snow started, while Logan was a sensible person and stopped somewhere to wait it out, and now they’re not gonna get here until the roads are clear again and I’m stuck with _you_ for however long.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with me?” Roman protested.

“Do you want an alphabetized list?”

“…You’ve been talking to Logan too much.”

“Just wait, soon I’m gonna start pulling out the five-syllable words you’ve never heard of, but are probably insulting.”

“Lovely.  My services end here, so get off the couch and put your bags away.”

Virgil grunted as one of said bags was dropped on top of him when he took too long to move.  “Alright, alright.”

Neither of them had exactly packed light for this trip.  By the time all their things were put away- Roman, of course, immediately calling dibs on the master bedroom, while Virgil decided he might as well take the other until the rest of their group made it there- it was beginning to get dark outside, and the snow coming down thickly enough to make it hard to see wasn’t helping.  It really would have been nice if there’d been a garage; Roman’s car was going to be _buried_ at this rate.  Naturally, now was the perfect time for the lights to flicker once, twice, and finally go out for good.  As annoyed as he was himself, Roman had to laugh when he heard a faint “Are you _fucking kidding me?”_ from down the hall.

“Well, so much for using the TV tonight,” he mumbled to himself.  He went to leave the room and nearly crashed into Virgil, who’d come bearing flashlights.

“And you told me I wouldn’t need these,” he said smugly.

“I still don’t think you needed to bring _six.”_

“Yeah, well, whatever.  You didn’t bring one at all.”

“Because I knew you had _six of them!”_   Roman sighed and followed him into the kitchen.  “I’m surprised you even need a flashlight.  With the way you keep your room, you should be used to seeing in the dark.”

“Oh, shut up.”  Virgil was much too tired and frustrated for good comebacks right now.  The drive here had been long and stressful, they hadn’t had time to stop for dinner with the storm coming, and now the stupid power was out and who knew when it would return.  “There are matches somewhere, right?”

The matches were located eventually, and Roman handed them to Virgil with a flourish.  Virgil used them to light a few candles and then the stove burner, grumbling the whole time about how stupid it would be if he burned the whole cabin down before the other two even got there.  Meanwhile, Roman looked through the pantry and what little there was in the fridge.

“Grilled cheese?” he suggested, holding up half a package of cheese slices.  “I mean, we need to use this up in case the power doesn’t come back, right?”

“Ugh, don’t even say that.  But yeah, sure, I don’t care.”  He leaned against the cabinets and slid down to the floor.

“…I take it you want me to do the cooking?”

Virgil hummed in agreement.  A second later, he remembered the gas stove, and also remembered exactly what had happened last time Roman used one.  “Wait- no, nope, I’m doing it, move.”

Grilled cheese was not difficult to make.  Unfortunately, Roman seemed determined to change that.  “I still think we should have something else to put in it,” he mused.  “Bacon or something.”

“Then it wouldn’t even be grilled cheese, that’s called a melt.  And get your hand away from that candle,” Virgil snapped.

Ironically enough, Roman’s guilty start almost made him burn himself.  “It’s _cold!”_ he defended.  “Though I can see how you might not have noticed, what with the icy void where your _heart_ should be.  If you don’t want me bothering you I’ll go start a fire, or am I not allowed to do that either?”

Virgil was briefly glad it was dark so Roman wouldn’t see him flinch.  He hadn’t meant to start something, but it looked like it was too late to go back.  “Go ahead.  Bold of you to assume I care what you do as long as it’s not breaking anything.”  What a blatant lie- of course he cared about him, maybe too much.  He watched Roman leave to the living room in a huff and tried not to feel guilty.  He’d been being obnoxious, so his reaction was totally fair, right?  Besides, Roman knew he didn’t actually hate him or anything.  With his overblown confidence, he’d probably just taken it as a joke, so it was fine.

Roman knelt in front of the fireplace in the dark and told himself the heat in his face was from anger and not from wanting to cry.  He’d thought he was getting along better with Virgil lately, but- he really did seem to hate him, didn’t he?  No, no, surely he wouldn’t have driven all the way here with him if he hated him, he was just overreacting.  Like always.  Letting his dumb feelings make everything more dramatic than it really was.  He turned his attention to the fireplace so intensely that if there were any justice in the universe, it would have burst into flames before he’d even lit a match.

Fifteen minutes later, Virgil turned the stove off, feeling considerably calmer after some time alone in the quiet.  Well, there was Roman muttering to himself in the other room, but that was more background noise than anything.  He was probably working out a story plot by talking to himself again.  Virgil shifted all the grilled cheese onto a plate, grabbed a couple of water bottles from the case in the pantry and went to see if he’d had any luck with the fire.

“Ro?  Food’s done, how’s it going in here?”  He figured they’d just go back to normal and pretend they hadn’t just been yelling at each other, like it always went- at least until he saw Roman.  He was sitting in front of a small fire, but he didn’t look at all happy about his success, hunched over with his face in his hands.  “…Roman?”

He looked up and tried to smile.  “I, uh- don’t worry, everything’s fine, I’m just- being stupid.”  His voice cracked on the last word.

Virgil cursed under his breath and put what he was holding down on the coffee table, kneeling next to Roman.  “Is this- I mean, are you-” God he sucked at this.  “I’m sorry,” he finally said.  “I didn’t think… I’m just tired, okay?  We’re both tired and pissed off and I didn’t mean to get like that at you.”

“It’s- it’s fine.”  Impulsively, Roman tried to hug him, out of pure relief that he wasn’t really mad at him.  He regretted it after approximately one second and pulled back to stare at the ground and try to recover his composure.  “I, um, I shouldn’t have yelled at you either.  …Truce?”

“Yeah.”  He reached back for the plate and set it between them.  “Grilled cheese?”

“Thanks.”

Even once they got past the post-fight awkwardness, their dinner conversation was quiet- like Virgil said, they were both tired.  Roman seemed especially subdued in comparison to his usual self.  He only started singing once, and even that wasn’t very loud, and Virgil found it was actually kind of soothing to listen to him when he wasn’t bursting into rooms demanding attention.  By the time they were finished, part of him was considering lying down right where he was and going to sleep.  The rest of him, however, remembered how cold it was and would much rather be in bed with blankets.

“I suppose there’s not much else we can do tonight,” Roman sighed, following his same train of thought a bit later.

“Would you seriously want to if there was?”

“We could’ve watched movies,” he reminded him.

“We’d both be out before the end of the first one and you know it.”

“Fine, fine.”  Roman pushed himself to his feet.  “Time to be getting to bed, then.”

“Mhm.”  Virgil managed to overrule that one part of his brain and reluctantly stood up as well.

A short time later, Virgil was in bed, getting increasingly frustrated.  He was _so tired._   But the mattress felt weird, and he was in a strange place without the ambient noise he was used to and kept hearing this stupid owl outside instead and it surprised him every time, and even though he stole all the blankets from the other bed in the room it was still so _cold._   Because, y’know, it was below freezing and the power was still out.  Also, how was he supposed to know Roman was okay right now?  Was he cold, too?  Virgil was pretty sure he at least wouldn’t die or anything with his double blankets, but Roman didn’t _have_ another bed in his room to steal the blankets from.  What if a murderer broke in, while they were trapped in this cabin and cut off from civilization?  Okay, that wasn’t a Roman-specific concern, or a realistic one, but still.  Virgil really wished his brain would shut up.

When the owl nearly gave him a heart attack because he was thinking about murderers too hard, it was pretty clear the sleep he so badly wanted wasn’t going to happen under these conditions.  Cursing pretty much the entire universe, Virgil got out of bed, wrapped two blankets around his shoulders and grabbed a flashlight.  Maybe he’d just sit in the living room until he could get sleepy.  Well… maybe he’d go sit in the living room _after_ he checked on Roman and made sure none of his worries were going to come true.

He pushed the door open and peeked in.  He’d gotten a look at the room earlier, but it seemed bigger in the dark somehow.  He tried not to feel like too much of a creep going up to the bed to look at Roman.  He tended to sprawl, normally, but right now he was curled up on his side.  Did that mean he was cold?  Well, yeah, he probably _was_ at least a little bit cold, but-

“…Virge?”

Virgil yelped, clutching his flashlight to his chest.  “Roman!  This isn’t… what it looks like?”

He propped himself up and squinted sleepily.  “Are you sure?  ‘Cause it looks like you’re wandering around because you can’t sleep and decided to see what I was doing.  Which was finally falling asleep until you started shining that light at me, thank you very much.”

He clicked it off sheepishly.

“Is there anything wrong, or…?”

Virgil shrugged.  “Can’t sleep, it’s too cold and weird here.  I was just gonna sit in the living room so it’s at least kinda warm.”

“Well, why don’t you stay with me?”  He could _feel_ the look Virgil gave him, even though he couldn’t see his face, and blushed.  “What I mean to say- you could sit with me and talk, and it might be a little warmer… never mind, it was a silly idea, I don’t know why I thought you would want-”

Roman’s flustered rambling was cut off by Virgil climbing onto the bed and sitting next to him, legs under the covers and the rest of him wrapped in his own blankets.  “Never mind,” he repeated weakly.

Virgil would have gotten a bit sleepy just from having something warm next to him, if not for the fact that the warm thing was Roman and therefore a good chunk of his brain was screaming about how close they were.  Incidentally, Roman’s brain was screaming as well, but he told it to shut up and leaned into Virgil, which of course made _his_ brain scream more.

“You were right,” Virgil mumbled.  “‘s a lot better like this.”

“Oh- good,” Roman managed in response.

Now that they were settled, he actually _was_ getting a little sleepy.  “Might just stay here until the power comes back.  You’re not allowed to move.”

…Well.

Maybe this wasn’t such a bad situation to be in after all.

**Author's Note:**

> honestly i wrote most of this in the past two hours and i cant tell if its good anymore but you know what, at least i got it done


End file.
